Getting Back On Track

I'm dipping my big toe into the water again. I've re-located to another city, but same state.  We did it the hard way, borrowing two different friends' vehicles at two different times and an open trailer to haul away the 12-year accumulation of possessions we had.  I'm not quite qualified to audition for 'Hoarders' yet, but there was certainly a healthy accumulation of items. We had some help to move several things but most of it was accomplished by myself and my husband. We hauled so much stuff to the local thrift shop here and another big trailer full of random stuff to the dump or 'Transfer Station' as it is called.  I'd never done that before and my gosh, it was gross. For a fee, the trash that is dumped there is loaded onto trucks and taken to the land fill somewhere else.  The smell was horrible and my favorite tennis shoes stunk afterwards because we had to off-load the junk ourselves and the ground where we had to step was filthy.  But it was quite interesting and those shoes will be fine after a good washing. I think everyone should have the chance to see what it's like at the dump.  I feel the same way about Greyhound bus trips.  Everyone should do it just once for the experience!
So after 2 weeks, I'm back again.  But why is it so hard to get back into something after you've been away for awhile?  I seem to have that problem here and I figure I will start writing something, just so I can say I'm doing it.  I have had such a great experience blogging about the things I blog about.  However, I don't follow some of the rules that are recommended to be a successful blogger.  To me, it's the consistency that counts.  For instance, I have yet to enter my blog into 'Picket Fence' or 'Top Mommy Blogs.' , therefore you don't see me asking for your vote on those sites.  Mistake?  Maybe.  But I am so happy to not have to look at those sites and monitor yet another influence tracker.  Another thing I've sadly neglected to do is register on Alexa.  Now I know that is a huge no-no, and even the fact that I'm admitting it here may hurt me.  And it took me forever to get myself a page on Facebook.  I knew I probably would do a terrible job at updating it, because my love affair with Facebook waned long ago and it turned out to be true, I'm horrible at updating.  But I do check in on Twitter more regularly, and some other influence sites, just because I know I should.  But it sure eats into my time doing the thing I like and think is the most productive, and that is blogging or writing. 
I know that to be a good brand ambassador one needs to do other things regularly that don't include writing.  You need to put yourself out there as much as possible so companies will see your blog as one that can be counted on to put out an article when you say you'll do it.  And I do apologize to the couple of companies that I flaked out on because of this move.  I will get your reviews up as soon as I possibly can, say by the end of next week? 

I think a lot of bloggers are so much better than I am, but the trap they fall into is that they feel like they have to do all the things that everyone else seems to be doing so that they will be highly rated.  That starts to feel like a lot of pressure!  And who needs pressure? Everyone has times when they can't be at their computer much at all. Remember, you're not chained to it! 
 
It's liberating to know that you can choose which social networking sites you  particularly like and are interested in and the others can wait until another time.  I think that the thing I need to do and love to do is to write and be consistent with it.  Now why am I saying this now, after a 2-week hiatus?  Because I am actually scared of blogging again.  It's like I have lost my edge and don't feel like I can sharpen it again.  But I know I want to and it's like getting back on the horse.  Once I start up again, it'll come back!   

Learning As I Go On 'Blogger'

About 9 months ago, I discovered the world of Giveaways, Reviews and Social Networking.  I already had a blog that I did just for fun among friends and family and so when I found out how you can integrate a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Stumble, Technorati, Digg and any number of the blogging communities into one great social engine, I was definitely hooked.  I do believe it changed my life trajectory somewhat!
The thing is, I really didn't use a blog mentor or a coach. I just started from scratch and learned and am learning as I go, probably making horrible, glaring, stupid mistakes, but loving it nonetheless.  A couple of things I learned JUST this week are:

• Blogger has Stats that you can look at to see how your blog is doing!. You can get where traffic is coming from, how many page views per hour, day, week, month, etc., what kinds of searches are being done to land someone on your page, etc.  That is so cool.  I knew that you could go to outside sources to get that info but it's so much easier to get it from your own blog source. I'm not sure if I just didn't notice this before or if it's a new feature.  But I like!  Just click on Stats and you will see everything I did!

• I just learned how to disable comments on a certain post.  Say, if I'm done with a giveaway, I can disable more comments from coming in.  (Not sure if I'll use it for that purpose, but very useful to know because you never know when you might need that feature!)  Just go to EDIT POST, click POST OPTIONS, click DON'T ALLOW, SHOW EXISTING! Easy!

• I learned about a great tool for bloggers called screen capture software!  It allows you to capture anything you see on your screen window including windows, menus, full screen, rectangular regions, web pages and even shots of moving images!  Maybe now I can actually capture that tricky Random.org window to show winners of my giveaways!

So another week is upon me and there are surely more things to learn as I make my way through this blog realm, which is surely every bit as captivating and interesting as anything Alice found in Wonderland!  One of these days I will look up how to create my own siggy!  Until then!

 Hugs,
Helena